QUOTATIONS: WAR, PEACE, SOCIAL, POLITICAL

All wars in the history of mankind had 3 objectives: 1) Expansion of one’s hegemony and control of foreign territories. 2) Domination of those territories through puppet governments which suppressed any dissent, smothered liberation movements, and and bloodily crushed revolutions. 3) Enrichment from exploitation of those lands, their populations and their resources.

Wars, revolutions, and terrorism have been triggered for thousands of years by the constant efforts of empires or big nations to impose on smaller states a subservient existence identical to that of domesticated animals.

Every failure is a key to success, because it rewards us with the experience and wisdom not to repeat it.

Capitalism satisfies our ego and most of our wants, but it leaves our souls and the Mother Theresa sense of humanity in us empty.

Dictators rule and survive on suppression, and revolutions ignite on suppressed aspirations and
desperation.

Prejudice is the logic of the bigot.

Economy in a free-market society functions like an untimed lunar tide. The “high tide” brings nutrients to dry land as the “high economic activity” brings jobs and prosperity to the market. But as the “high tide” implodes and the water sweeps backward, so does the “ high inflation” implodes the economy and forces it to recede. Recession and scarcity – and lunar absence- then evens things out until the next “high tide” slowly begins to form.

Education and good upbringing gives to people the same worth as the cutting and the polishing gives to uncut diamonds. Without it, both are just another pebble in the pile.

The mind is the library of our life, and the repository of our good and bad experiences upon which our values, conduct and beliefs are based.

Animals are guided by their natural instincts, but humans are guided by guile, avarice, envy and selfishness.

Democracy functions like a stock market. Those who invest $ millions into the political campaigns get millions of shares and the highest returns and dividends, and those who invest only one vote get only one worthless share!

God is the hope the hopeless, and religion is the path of faithful to the bliss of spiritual immortality.

Forgiveness is an escape from a torrent of hatred and a thirst for revenge.

Heaven and Hell are not after-life destinations; they are the earthy Wedding and Divorce dreams and nightmares. You marry an angel, and the Heaven is all yours – until time shows your angel is really a devil, and divorce is the only escape out of Hell!

Living recklessly leads to an end of suffering relentlessly.

Problems are the consequence of thoughtlessness, neglect, and procrastination, or the results of sinister risks and adventures.

The near economic collapse of some countries of the European Union in 2010-2013 occurred because demagogue politicians loaded their countries with heavy debts, spent it to give their voters the illusion of an expanding economic boom, and the deceived public squandered it thinking it was spending the excess wealth of economic growth with more wealth due to them ahead and no need for savings – until the lenders came knocking at the door!

The political gridlock in Washington is akin to a traffic jam where 535 stuck drivers (The Members of the U.S. Congress) look at any bill submitted by either Republicans or Democrats as ” a traffic light,” and where one party sees red, the other sees green and vise versa.

Euphoria has a twin sister that lives down the street, Dysphoria.

Trust that seems to be solid and bullet-proof today may turn out to be poked and bullet-ridden tomorrow.

The devil is in us, and the “The Devil Made Me Do It” claims by evil doers prove it!

Solitude is a human desire to connect with nature or with a deity, while the herd instinct desire draw us back into the multitude.

Foreign policy has been for eons the art of power, expansion, and domination by big states, and the art of surviving and avoiding domination or occupation by small states.

Wars of domination are spillovers of excess military power.

History reveres the memory of virtuous men, and preserves the infamy of evil and brutish men in positions of power.

Ignorance is the dividing line between the ignorant and the truth.

Political contributions are legal bribes for legal access to political power.

The correct definition of terrorism is: “An endless circular revenge among political enemies.”

Patriotism flourishes in the empty wilderness of uncultivated minds where demagogues in search for glory plant the seeds of war and thrive.

History provides the most cumulative knowledge and the best tested experience upon which all models of maintaining peace must be based.

War history since the battle of Thermopylae (Greece, 480 B.C.) has bestowed valor and virtue to all the defenders, and has confirmed the bestial skulduggery of all the invaders

Philosophy and religions have failed for eons to align mankind into a harmonious social order because human greed has never been tamed.

Diplomacy is the art of avoiding catastrophic wars between powerful states, and the subliminal art of dominating without war smaller states. Most people are so pre-occupied with acquiring more wealth and more possessions that they become socially blind for the dispossessed.

All forms of life are guided by their inborn instincts of survival and subsistence, except humans whose higher intelligence has corrupted those instincts with greed and envy.

Christianity is a deformed variation of Judaism that hoodwinked followers into the belief of born sinners in need of salvation for afterlife comfort. This beguiled creed duped Byzantine Emperor Constantine I in 313 A.D. to recognize this hoax as an official religion, and European colonialists later imposed it into colonies. It is a default faith, and worthless beyond ritualistic social gatherings.

Religion is a binding belief to most people because they are born into, which is then ingrained into the mental conformity grid of customs, race, culture, tradition, and language

Virtue is the quality that encompasses the compassion of the soul; the honesty of the mind; the charity of the heart; the grace of character. and the absence of greed and selfishness

Culture is a train that humans board in childhood, and they don’t disembark until it reaches the afterlife station.

Taliban shooting of children going to school, and sending suicide bombers to blow up inside classrooms while shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is Great) commit the greatest blasphemy against Prophet Mohammed who preached: “The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr!”

Cynicism and Stoicism are an apathetic philosophy ascribing to the belief that kingship, autocracy, tyranny, oligarchy, political corruption, and human greed and antagonism will always be there, and a better life could be had when one is not preoccupied with those vices.

Wars are about predation. As a pride of lions need prey animals to survive, so do the vast military industries of capitalist states need wars to justify their existence and the extravagant military spending. And as lions don’t prey on their own, so dominant powers don’t prey on their own but on weaker states whose citizens serve as prey to sustain the life of their military industries.

Political campaigning is well-organized fishing trips in which the speeches made are the fishing line hooks, the political promises given to the audiences are the baits, and the votes reeled in on election day are the catch.

Nationalism is a pride-feeding obsession that corrodes the mind, clouds rational thinking, extorts the virtues and the valor of self-righteousness, and creates an impulse of aggression that often overflows and spills into other domains where war turns it into a national curse and a global anathema.

Predator drones are a monstrosity of sciences that has allowed a civilization to transform itself into a wanton killvilization on other humans opposed to its global domination.

George W. Bush copied the Nazi ideology of Hitler’s Deputy Field Marshal Herman Goering “how to sell a war to your people” for his concocted Saddam Hussein threat of chemical weapons to America to justify his war on Iraq: “Tell people they are threatened, and denounce the pacifists!”

World peace has two sides: Peace as serene harmony among all states pursued by peaceful nations, and “might is right” subordinate self-serving peace pursued by dominant powers.

Political rhetoric is the welcoming red carpet treatment to prospective voters before the elections, and political corruption is whatever is swept underneath afterward.

Jihad (Holy War) is a Muslim’s war of revenge against domestic tyrants, stooges of foreign powers, and infidels – non-Muslim enemies, and martyrdom is the ultimate sacrifice required not only to achieve victory, but also to inspire future generations to savor it as their almighty mandated duty.

Money affords a sense of social security and convenience to a modest person, and buys plenty of vainglory and vanity for the conceited person.

Modesty is the distinctive quality in women who disdain the endless vanity of preserving their beauty and feminines in front of the mirror and live their lives around the heart-felt beauty of their soul and the strength of their character.

Writing is about understanding ourselves, give others another angle to peek into themselves, and give the public an opinion of how a writer view the maladies of human conflicts, wars, and the endless human suffering emanating from them.

Evolution of “Justice” since 3.000 B.C. From simple laws posted on the walls of court buildings of the Minoan Civilization in Crete, Ancient Greece, where litigants could read and clearly understand their rights before entering the courtroom -no lawyers, to Constitutions around the world guaranteeing “free justice to all” [no ifs and no buts], to voluminous and convoluted laws that 99% of the people cannot understand, to judges who would rather base their decisions on precedents, legal notes, and customs – rather than wade through labyrinthine legal Chapters, to predatory lawyers asking for hourly fees what 85% of the people of the world earn average in a week, to William Shakespeare’s “justified and undignified” utterance: “Let’s kill all lawyers!”

A college degree is nothing more than a box of literary tools, not a recognition of expertise or craftsmanship. That must be earned later in the field in the same way warriors earn their medals in the battlefield.

Leadership and statesmanship has been a triangle of uneven and tortuous manifest destiny for most people since the dawn of time
At the top of the Pyramid: The statesman – who leads by his own ingenuity, ability and wisdom.
Bottom angle A: The dudes – mostly princess or scions of elite families, who inherit leadership and subsequently depend on the opinions of their royal court, or on their inner-circle of advisers to run a state.
Bottom angle B: The sadists – tyrants, despots, egomaniacs, or military dictators vying for self-aggrandizement and a place in history – and infamy!

“National interests,” planted by the imperial powers during the colonial era on usurped foreign lands, and protected post-colonially by sheer force and by clandestine warfare, have been the major source of hatred and hostility that still breed wars across nations, religions, and continents.

Death of all reproducing living things and plants is nature’s design of maintaining space available for their offsprings. Elements, which do not reproduce, are eternal.

Hypocrisy is the personification of emptiness.

Democracy: A system of government supposedly chosen by the people for the people, where ordinary voters control the government only for 1 day – election day, and the special interests that fund the campaigns of the candidates control the government for the next 4 years.

Leaders and Cowards: The Leaders: Those who bravely lead in the battle, like Alexander the Great, Prophet Mohammed and Napoleon. The Cowards: The default leaders of modern highly commercialized political campaigns who foster a desire for risk-free greatness. They invent threats to initiate wars, and then send their soldiers “to die like dogs” (Hernest Hemingway’s view of war) for a “risk free” listing in the Wartime Hall of Fame! Soldiers die at the front; their officers far back get the medals and stars, and the “coward leaders” get to walk into the Wartime Hall of Fame stepping over the dead bodies of their lost enlisted men.
Greatness is “great” – when others die for.

Intelligence and Intellect: Intelligence is the quick or lame functional dynamic of reasoning by all living things, whereas Intellect is the developmental expansion of human faculties into any field of arts or sciences.

Friendships is the magnet that attracts similar minds and similar interests, but the magnetism fades as personal interests are re-evaluated, pursuits re-directed, and life experience re-adjust social values.

Astronomy is a limited science with incomplete knowledge on our own solar system, and a plethora of abstract and conjectural theories of what lies beyond it.

Human life evolves in 3 stages. Youth: The stage of learning and understanding of one’s own self and the world. Middle: The stage of growth and perseverance to achieve one’s goals and fulfill desires. Old: The state of reflection, acceptance of the limitations of age, and anticipation of the end of the journey.

Luxury possessions are the substitute items of kinship grandeur to vain people with a desire to imitate a princely existence.

Law is the human invention that transformed cavemen into citizens.

The proliferation of iPads and other gadgets with applications for any mental human function have become the substitute brains in our fingers while the brainpower in our heads slides into a declining atrophy on reserve mode.

True love is the exquisite internal fondness that flows like a pristine water spring at the source – like love for children and grandchildren – not its water down the stream that inadvertently mixes with social, sexual, commercial, and selfish interests.

The “town bully” behavior of the Wild West era has been adapted by then U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt with his “Speak slowly and carry a big stick” motto that turned U.S. foreign policy into a “might is right” arrogant global attitude that still bedevils the world.

The Boston Marathon bombing surviving terrorists Dzhokar Tsarnaev described victims of that bombing attack as “collateral damage” for the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Collateral damage” has been a U.S. coined term that dehumanizes civilian deaths on its wars as fallen bricks and walls. Now Tsarnaev reminded the U.S. that “collateral damage” is people, and he is not alone. Barack Obama’s pastor, Dr. Jememiah Wright, thought so when he described the 9/11 attack as: “The chickens came home to roost!” This maxim – in biblical language- means: “If thou shall export death, death shall cometh upon you!”

When marital bliss turns to marital blight, most divorces are about revenge and stripping financially the former spouse than about officiating a legal separation

Ideas are conceptions of the mind driven by subconscious instincts. That is why Socrates insisted that they should be dialectically tested and proven against the odds before one accepted them or acted upon.

Marital conflicts are caused by the clash of egos and of differences in values, interests, and beliefs that bubble up post-maritally. Handling requires mutual respect, no obstinacy, and a scale of humility to weigh the causes of the conflict versus the repercussions on each partner.

Foreign military and development aid by dominant powers to poor states is not charity – as touted publicly in the media. It is political prostitution in which poor states prostitute their body politics in exchange for cash and arms. The aid is flowing as long as the recipient state remains fully subservient!